Sen. Abe seeks justice for slain lecturer, INEC ad hoc staff
Amaka Agbu, Port Harcourt
The Senator representing Rivers South-East Senatorial District, Sen. Magnus Abe, has demanded for justice over the killing of a polytechnic lecturer and an ad hoc staff of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), killed during the February 23, Presidential election in the state.
Dr. Ferry Gberegbe, a senior lecturer at the Ken Saro-Wiwa Polytechnic, Bori and Ibisaki Amachree, an ad hoc INEC staff were both killed in separate incidents during the February 23 and March 9 elections during the violence that trailed the conduct of the polls in Rivers state.
Speaking during a condolence visit to the Gberegbe family, Sen. Abe said there was nothing that happened at the collation centre in Bori that necessitated the use of firearms.
He stated that video of the killing of the late Dr. Gberegbe, as widely circulated in the media, shows that he was murdered in cold blood by a trigger-happy policeman.
“I demand that the murderer(s) must be brought to justice. There is no fancy way of putting it. He must be brought to book. One of the ways we can put an end to all these things is that perpetrators of crime must be punished,” he declared.
The Senator said that elections were not supposed to be life-threatening events, nor wars, but that people deliberately created a situation that lead to the loss of the lives of innocent Rivers men and women.
“I condemn in strong terms the orgy of violence that characterized elections in Rivers state. This must stop,” Senator Abe stated.
Similarly, while at the family home of the Amachree’s, the senator said it was sad that the efforts made by some leaders to arouse the conscience of the people on the need for peace in the state before the elections fell on deaf ears.
He said that “we had hoped and prayed that 2019 will be different. We had believed that we could appeal to the conscience of men and get Rivers people to realize that the state belongs to all of us and that we could peacefully come out like other human beings across the world, vote and elect those that would run our affairs for four years.
“Unfortunately, your daughter, an innocent Nigerian who was going to serve her fatherland, to join others in making our democracy to work became a victim of the shameless madness that has characterized our state.
“Every effort some of us made to try to reach out to people to understand that this thing can be done peacefully, fell on deaf ears and as usual all across the country again, Rivers state became a theatre of war.”
